Wednesday, August 1, 2012

The Rating Game - NDTV Sues Nielsen-TAM

When Anna Hazare ended his fast on August 28 last year most people were
convinced TimesNow ran away with the
coverage ratings. Immediately after the event the debates within the news media
started over TRPs. This article “News channels blame weekly ratings for quality decay” quotes Rajdeep Sardesai wanting the TAM ratings monthly instead of
weekly. Advertisers seemed to want it every day even. Says Rajdeep: “While TRPs
are important, in English news channels, which have a small sample size anyway,
TRPs should be seen as television respect points and focus on credibility of
the news channels.” Sure, credibility is built by mindless Bollywood, Cricket
and garish masala programmes. Credibility is built by senseless daily polls,
manipulated debates, foodie programmes, comedy programmes on supposed news
channels, political bias and leaning, and mindless contests like GreatestIndian
or Indian of the Year. That’s not just Rajdeep’s channel though, it’s the whole
lot. It is amazing that the rush for TRPs is being blamed for decay in news
channels. Well, in simple terms the TAM ratings mean advertising money and more
money. Another executive from a news channel stated:“News companies are indulging in a mindless
race for ratings…”. Someone seems to have lost that race. Lost very badly it
seems.

The Rating Game just
took a turn for the worse. NDTV filed a lawsuit (Read it HERE or HERE)
against Nielsen, the premier TV
rating company and the parent of TAM-India
and has sought damages worth a whopping $1.4 Billion. You have to be very
patient to read through the whole 194 pages of the lawsuit scribd in the link I
have provided. It lists all the wrongdoings of Nielsen-TAM since 2004 right up
to 2012 according to NDTV. At every turn NDTV claims to have been the victim
and suffered damages. Given this is a legal issue it would be prudent not to
pass any comment on the contents of the lawsuit. But here are some edited
excerpts from the lawsuit (in random order):

… While Nielsen, Kantar and TAM are liable for abusing their dominant
position in the Indian market, they are also liable for indulging in corrupt
practices by manipulating viewership data in favor of channels that are willing
to covertly provide monetary inducements / payments / bribes to TAM officials.
These payments are accepted and viewership data manipulated as per the
requirement of such paying channels.

… Since NDTV is among the very
few broadcasters that has refused to indulge in any corrupt practices,
naturally its ratings have suffered. This has negatively impacted, amongst
other damages, NDTV’s advertising revenues.

… Low ratings for NDTV news channels have also led to public claims by
other news channels of being the number 1 (one) channel. This loss of hard
earned reputation and goodwill along with the damage to the profitability of
NDTV as a result of low advertising revenues has in turn severely, damaged the
brand value ofNDTV. Loss of respect and
faith amongst shareholders and seen the value of its share price decline from a
high of INR 501 on January 4, 2008, to a low of INR 25.7, as of December 20,
2011. This has also demoralized the employees of NDTV and forced the company to
have to pay higher compensation to retain nationally recognized talent.

… It is common knowledge that there are a number of television channels
owned by politicians and political parties. Furthermore, politicians also own
cable networks in certain Indian states. At the household level, in certain
instances PeopleMeters have been installed at the residences of government
officials, where tampering of the data also takes place. Consequently, there is
little doubt that corruption, bribery and manipulation of TAM, has extended to
public officials, government agencies and politicians. Many politicians who own
news networks (one-third of all news networks in India) and cable operations
(60% of cable operations) continue to benefit from the corruption of data and
Nielsen/Kantar’s refusal to stop publication of such data.

May 2009: GfK-MODE showed NDTV 24x7 had a viewership share of 60% among
the top three English channels.

May 2009: This time interestingly enough by Nielsen itself, showed NDTV
24x7 having a viewership share of 61% among the top three English channels.

An August 2011: GfK MODE showed NDTV 24x7 having a viewership share of
56% among the top three English channels.

March 2012: GfK-MODE showed the viewership share of NDTV 24x7 at 51%
among the top three English channels

However, the viewership data released weekly by TAM in India during
those periods shows the news channels of NDTV having a very low viewership.
Such large discrepancies between survey data and PeopleMeter data is
statistically impossible, unequivocally indicating manipulation and corruption
in the data.

… It is highly relevant considering that within the television industry,
34% (INR 116 billion, USD 2.1 billion in 2011) of revenues come from
advertising. For news broadcasters such as NDTV, advertising constitutes 70% to
80% of revenues.

… The loss of revenue caused to NDTV on account of the false, fabricated
and manipulated data released to the public by Nielsen, Kantar and TAM over the
past eight (8) years is not less than $810 million.

…. A meeting was held between the representatives of Nielsen…. and the
Consultant along with representatives of NDTV... On February 28, 2012 at J.W.Marriott
Hotel, Mumbai. At the said meeting, the representatives of Nielsen interrogated
the Consultant as to how the bribes were paid and who was/were the person(s) responsible
for taking bribes on behalf of TAM to fix ratings. The Consultant named several
employees of TAM who took bribes through other consultants to fix ratings for
channels. The Consultant also pointed out that one of the employees of TAM had currently
moved to a competing broadcaster.

More than anything else NDTV’s case justifies the title of this blog!
The media world has indeed become murky and there could well be many mini-mafias
operating in it. Not surprisingly, the only place where one finds mention of
this lawsuit is in some print and online media. Whatever the outcome, this has to
be landmark case for TV channels, advertisers and the TRP system. NDTV mentions
bribes being paid by ‘other’ channels. If you leave out the govt channels there
are not more than 15-18 news channels at the national level and the English
ones are hardly around 4 or 5. The bad news for the TV and advertising industry
is also that they have collectively almost put all their eggs for ratings in
the single basket of TAM.

Now, since NDTV has taken on the alleged corrupt practices of
Nielsen-TAM, news channels need to go another mile. There are Air-Passengers
associations, Rail-Passengers associations. Will it take a News-Watchers Association to sue many of the media channels for
bias, manipulating debates and sometimes spreading outright lies? What will it
take for news channels to cut down the Bollywood masala, Cricket masala and get
more reporters on the ground?

If TRP ratings can be corrupt and manipulated, how many polls by news
channels are perceived to be corrupt and manipulated? What explains their
playground being Delhi and Metros alone? What will it take them to get the
nation covered? How many times will it take Assam and NE to remind them of poor
news coverage? As long as there isn’t a judicious coverage of the nation by so
called “national” news channels they aren’t going to have enough content and viewers
are not going to be bothered by losses due to the rating game. Maybe NDTV and
even other news channels should put up an online poll to ask if people are sad
for their losses. The results will likely stun them.

8 comments
:

Fabulous.....While NDTV's allegations against Nielsen might be true, it is heartening to see that their viewership is dropping. If NDTV looses this case, that would mean NDTV's viewership has dropped considerably and causing them significant loss, which is what should be the fate for media crook channel like NDTV.

I think, poor me, that NDTV honchos looked in the mirror and decided to blame Neilson, for the same crime which they are guilty of. No wonder NDTV is in shit. Wait for price to drop to Rs 2.50, then I will make a bid to take over, won't be long.

Thanks for keeping this wonderful blog going and exposing the corruption in media world. I am not sure if Nielsen is manipulating the data or not but I am sure of thing that NDTV has lost the credibility (not that other channels has gained any). i myself don't watch any of these news channels and i see so many around me who don't. I damn sure about your final punch, the results will sure shock them, provided (and that is a big IF) they are honest to themselves

Ndtv, plays news jockey to its politicians.I started to hate this channel from the time of Nora radia tapes. But I never new its shares are dropped,I am happy if it falls to zero.two days back, I was browsing thru channels and on ndtv ,the topic of discussion was will priyanka Gandhi be a full time politician ,and some thing of that sort. They were trying to manipulate peoples mind for their own gain. I truly believe what may be the corruption in tam,that ndtv is on low viewwership. After the burkha -barking dog .Nira radia tapes.

I usually do not even know how I ended up here, but I believed this article was superior. I dont know exactly who youre but definitely youre going to a legendary blogger if you are not actually Take care!

I was an ardent viewer of NDTV. Of late it is very clear to even an ordinary citizen who does not know much about politics can easily smell a rat in the way NDTV anchors like Barkha n Nidhi conduct the discussion in the panel they select to snub a particular speaker. The discussions are partisan giving less time or no time to participants to express their views by cutting down their voice or needless poking in between in a uncivilised manners. Further it is seen that the anchors try putting their words in participants mouth. My interaction when I am in USA with persons here also echo the same opinion. I will be more than happy to see NDTV's left leaning will result in further plummeting its market value. God bless India against such partisan medias.

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